In the northeast corner, I found a hatch. It resembled the near-invisible hatches that accessed the Gap, but it had a black rubber seal around it.
No keypad. No handle.
My body hummed with nervous energy. This door was different than Gateway. I should leave it alone and tell the Committee I had found another hatch. I should didn’t mean I would. Gateway had another inner door, and I couldn’t leave without seeing if this one did, too.
I pushed with my hands. Nothing. Putting more force into it, I tried again. A crackling sounded. I bent over and pressed my shoulders to the hatch, using my legs for added strength.
A slow sucking noise grew louder as I kept the pressure on. Then it popped free. I staggered with surprise. The hatch banged down off to the side as darkness spilled from the opening.
I braced for the ice-cold nothing to rob me of air, but only the stale smell of dust reached me. I straightened, poking my head into the space past the doorway.
The semi-darkness stretched up to an impossible height and disappeared into black. It felt like Outer Space, but with stale air and walls. Faint bluelight climbed the sides. I hoisted myself onto the floor constructed of metal sheets riveted together just like the rest of Inside.
I walked along, shining my light. It was a huge empty space. At least, it was empty until my light lit stacks of metal sheets, pipes, equipment, barrels and I-beams. An amazing array of supplies.
In the far southwest corner were gigantic shelves. The shelves appeared to be half-completed levels. I counted them. Six. The space had room for six more levels!
No. A huge expanse loomed above the sixth one.
I knelt on the floor as understanding sucked my breath away. The builders of Inside knew the journey would be long and our population would grow. Above me was plenty of room for us to expand. No more overcrowding. No more restrictions on the number of children. We could have large families and privacy. I could have a family.
I pressed my forehead to the cold metal floor, trying not to pass out. My shaky hand found the pendant. I squeezed the sheep, sending the signal.
Riley, I thought, bring reinforcements, we’re going to need them.
* * * * *
Acknowledgments
My thank-yous always start with my husband, Rodney. His support is critical to my writing and essential when I’m flying all over the place to attend book events. My children, Luke and Jenna, also get a thank-you for inspiring me and for not making me feel too guilty when I’m running around for my other job.
The entire story for this book came to me in a dream, including characters, plot twists and ending. That hadn’t happened to me before and hasn’t since. However, dream novels still need to be written, and I’d like to thank a group of Seton Hill University critiquers who looked at the first chapter and said, “You may have something here.”
Thanks to Dr. Michael Arnzen, Venessa Giunta, Johanna Gribble, Sara Lyon, Kathryn Martin, Heidi Ruby Miller, Darren Moore, Sabrina Naples, Rachael Pruitt and Shara Saunsaucie.
A special thank-you to the original Tricky (the good one), Mike Mehalek, who came up with the cool title!
A big thank-you to those who read the first draft and helped with revisions—my editor Mary-Theresa Hussey, my agent Robert Mecoy, my critique partner Kimberly Howe, and Elizabeth Mazer. Also to all those at Harlequin Books who helped the book along the way (too many to count, let alone list), thank you all so much! The cover is dead-on perfect—a heartfelt thanks to the art department and all the talented artists and designers who helped with the cover.
No acknowledgments are ever complete without thanking my mounting army of Book Commandos. They are spreading the word about my books in bookstores, in book groups, in libraries, in line at the grocery stores, throughout their families and online. You guys rock! A special thank-you for those who went that extra mile: Amberkatze, Lorri Amsden, Deborah Beamer, Linda Childs, Allison Leigh Davis, Michelle Deschene-Warren, David Hankerson, Michelle Haring, Kristy Kalin, Lexie, Holly Nelson, Lora Negrito, Rosemary Potter, Lee Ann Ray, Christina Russo, Rachel Smith, Michelle Staffa, Jenny Sweedler and Diana Teeter. Trella will want to recruit you all to the Force of Sheep.
Outside In
To Mary-Theresa Hussey,
for her editorial excellence and extreme patience.
Thanks for the help, encouragement and smiley faces!
Introduction
My world changed in a heartbeat. That’s how it felt to me. As if one second ago, I was Trella the lower level scrub, cleaning the air and water ducts of Inside, and now I am Trella the victorious leader of the Force of Sheep rebellion. Yes the name sounds ridiculous, and I still can’t believe we named a major life-changing event after livestock—or actually a stuffed animal—but it made sense at the time.
Why? Because I once thought my fellow scrubs were sheep, passive and content with the status quo. I was wrong and learned if you put enough sheep together you have a herd—a force to be reckoned with. A force that turned our world upside down and inside out.
Of course, it really didn’t change in a second. It took six weeks, which in Inside time is six hundred hours (one hundred hours per week). But if I compared it to how long we’ve been living here in Inside—147,019 weeks—it’s a mere four thousandths of a percent. And here’s the kicker, we have another 852,981 weeks to go before we reach our destination. Mind-boggling!
Where are we going? Good question. According to Logan, our computer expert, our metal cube-shaped world is traveling through Outer Space. And since Outer Space is incredibly huge, it will take us a total of a million weeks to get to a planet where we can go Outside and live. We’re not sure what exactly Outside is since many of Inside’s computer records have been deleted.
According to our remaining records, another so-called “rebellion” happened around week 132,076 when Admiral Trava reported saboteurs had tried to destroy the computer systems with magnets, erasing all the historical files. But Logan says it’s bogus and he suspects the Trava family deleted those files so they could rule the people of Inside.
Before that first rebellion, Inside was ruled by a Committee comprised of all the nine families, but the Trava family didn’t want to share. Since they were in charge of security, they had the weapons and they took control. Each family had been responsible for the different systems that keep us all alive. Air, water, hydroponics, shepherds, recycling, the infirmary, the power plant and the kitchen. Yeah that’s a lot, but when you’re living in a big metal cube in the middle of Outer Space, you need every one.
The Travas separated the people into uppers and lowers (a.k.a. scrubs), and kept us confined to our levels (uppers on levels three & four, scrubs on levels one & two). They sowed the seeds of distrust and created the Population Control Police (a.k.a. Pop Cops) to make sure we all followed the rules. Their propaganda worked. The scrubs, including me, thought the uppers were living in big apartments with big families and cushy jobs, while we lived in overcrowded barracks with no privacy and were forced to clean and maintain the systems (after all, rust and dust are the twin evils of Inside).
It worked. The scrubs hated the uppers and the uppers hated us.
Now back to our rebellion. It started with an upper named Domotor. His first attempt at overthrowing the Travas failed, but he discovered the location of Gateway—the mythical Gateway to Outside—and saved the info on disks.
This is where I come in. Domotor h
id his disks in an air duct above his rooms on level three. Later, Domotor recruited me to retrieve his disks and I did. This one event set off a whole heap of trouble for me. And my best and only friend Cog was arrested for covering for me.
Now I’m not going to detail everything that happened. If you want to know all about it, you can go to your computer and read through this file: ISBN-978-0-373-21006-0.
But I will summarize. I discovered the uppers didn’t have it any better than scrubs, and I met one I really liked named Riley. He helped me, along with Logan and a few others, to find Gateway. Unfortunately when Cog and I opened it, we learned Outside was really Outer Space, a big black freezing nothing that sucked my friend out. Cog’s very last act was saving my life.
So much for freedom in Outside. But the others didn’t let the disappointment stop them. Riley, Logan and a few uppers—the rest of the Force of Sheep—still wanted to restore power to all the families. And we did. The Travas were arrested and a temporary Committee was formed.
Even with this new Committee, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to change our ways. And with four levels, Inside was still too small for our population.
I had a hard time sitting through meetings, so I escaped to explore the ducts every so often. Without having to worry about the Pop Cops, I could really search places I had only briefly passed.
And guess what? I discovered that Inside wasn’t just four levels high. There was a vast space above level four. Plenty of room for many more levels. We could spread out!
After this breakthrough, I thought Inside was done with trouble.
Too bad, I thought wrong.
Chapter 1
My fingers ached as my leg muscles trembled. Beads of sweat snaked down the skin on my back, leaving an itchy trail. I clung to the almost sheer metal wall and breathed in deep. When my heart slowed to a more normal rhythm, I relaxed my right hand’s grip and stretched for the next handhold—a short piece of pipe. Then I repeated the motion with my left, climbing another meter higher.
Far below, spots of daylight illuminated the half completed construction on level ten. Distant voices floated on the stale dusty air. I had passed the last of the bluelights. Nothing but blackness remained above me.
I cocked my head, sweeping the flashlight’s beam across the wall in search of another pipe to grab. Logan had designed a special helmet equipped with a light to keep my hands free.
“Trella?” Riley’s voice startled me.
I lost my grip. Falling, I cursed my own stupidity for not switching my earring/receiver off.
“I know you can hear me,” he said with an annoyed tone. “Where are you?”
Getting one hell of a rope burn, I grabbed my safety line and squeezed to slow my fall. After what felt like a thousand weeks, I reached the end of the rope and jerked hard, biting my tongue. I swung, tasting blood and lamenting the slip. That had been the highest point I or anyone else had attained. Ever.
Riley grunted in frustration. “Trella, you can go exploring later. You’re late for the Committee meeting. They’re waiting for you.”
He wasn’t the only one frustrated. For the last twelve weeks, I’d been promised time to go exploring the Expanse. All my previous forays had lasted about an hour before I’d been summoned to another important meeting. This time, I had been determined to ignore everyone, only to forget about the receiver.
I had hoped to reach the ceiling of the Expanse, but the effort needed to re-scale the wall would be too much for my tired muscles. Resigning myself to yet another delay, I stopped my swing by dragging my hand along the wall.
The construction workers wanted to build a ladder up the side of the Expanse, install daylights and find the ceiling. But the Committee insisted they first finish the six new levels for the citizens of Inside to spread out. I agreed, yet my curiosity would not be satisfied until I knew the height of the Expanse.
Pressing the top button on my shirt, I said to Riley, “Tell the Committee I’ll be there in an hour. They can start without me. They don’t need me there to quibble over every minor detail.”
“You’re right,” Riley said. “They need you when they quibble over the insignificant details, the worthless details and the waste-of-everyone’s time details.”
While understandable, his sarcasm was too harsh for someone as even-tempered as Riley. “What happened?”
“I can’t get a work crew to fix the faulty wiring in level five. It’s a mess, but they’re too busy with level six. We’ve lived in those four levels for the last one hundred and forty-seven thousand plus weeks, it won’t kill us to wait a few more.”
Overcrowding in the bottom two levels had been insufferable, but now that the uppers and lowers were united, there should be more room. Except the uppers wouldn’t consider any plans for the scrubs to move into their levels. They insisted it would be a wasted effort since the new levels would be ready soon.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. I transferred my weight back onto the wall and unclipped the rope from my safety harness. Climbing down two meters to the roof of level ten, I glanced up. Next time, I would need a longer rope.
By then, level six would probably be finished. I walked over to the access stairs. It was so nice not to squeeze between levels. But before I reached them, the construction foreman called my name.
I waited for him to join me and smiled in recognition of the burly man. “Hi, Hank, how’s it going?”
“Lousy,” Hank said. He had buzzed his gray hair to a stubble on his head. Holding a wipe board in one hand, he tapped the board with a marker. “I’ve a list of repairs for levels one to four, but no one will do them. And I’m losing construction people every hour.”
“Losing how?”
“They take a break and never come back.” My alarm must have shown on my face, because Hank rushed to assure me. “It’s not like that. They’re angry the uppers aren’t doing any of the work. My crews are being difficult, showing up late, leaving early or not coming at all.”
A passive resistance. Wonderful. “Why won’t anyone fix the repairs?”
“Same reason. The uppers aren’t doing their share.”
I suppressed a sigh. The Pop Cops had threatened the uppers with exile in the lower levels in order to scare them into cooperating. They had thought life below would be nothing but hard physical labor. Since they had run all the systems in Inside, their jobs involved sitting in front of a computer, and telling the scrubs what to do. Changing their perception of the scrubs was still ongoing, and I believed would be one of the hardest tasks. But not impossible.
“Okay, Hank. I’ll tell the Committee.”
He looked doubtful. “That Committee can only agree on one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“To disagree.”
I laughed, but Hank didn’t. “Oh, come on. It’s not that bad. We don’t have Pop Cops anymore.”
“Maybe we should.”
Hank’s words followed me as I descended to level three. He had to be joking. No one…well, no scrub—and Hank had been one for maintenance—would ever wish for the return of the Pop Cops. I dismissed his comment as being melodramatic and hurried to my room.
Since it had only been twelve weeks since the rebellion, I still slep
t in the extra room in the infirmary in Sector B3. It had been designated for the doctor’s intern, but, so far, no one could handle the job. I wouldn’t mind—a place of my own was a luxury I’ve never had—except I shared the suite’s washroom and kitchen with Doctor Lamont. Also known as Kiana Garrard. Or as I liked to call her, the Traitor.
Unfortunately, I remained in the minority. The Committee had reviewed her actions during the rebellion. They decided she had been duped by Lieutenant Commander Karla Trava and her betrayal had minor consequences. Of course, the two infirmaries full of wounded from the revolt had nothing to do with their ruling. And the limited number of doctors hadn’t been a consideration, either. Yeah, right and I was Queen of Inside.
The Traitor tended to a few patients in the main room of the infirmary. Which consisted of two rows of beds lined up along each side. Curtains hung from U-shaped tracks in the ceiling for privacy and a narrow path cut through the middle. A high counter full of medical supplies covered half the back wall. Next to the counter was another door that led to the Traitor’s office, the exam room and the surgery. Beyond them was the apartment.
Without looking at her, I hurried past the beds, aiming for the far door.
“Trella,” she called.
I paused, but kept my back to her.
“I have a surgery scheduled for hour sixty. I’ll need your assistance.”
“What happened to Catie?”
“She passed out when one of the construction crew came in with a bloody gash on his forehead that exposed the bone.”
Closing my eyes, I suppressed the accusation that she purposely tried to gross out the people I found to help her. Yet another item for my long to-do list—find the Traitor an intern. “I’m busy. You’ll have to find someone else to help.” I glanced at the clock. Hour fifty-five.
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